James was surprised when the tower added a "you're welcome" to its message. The Tower is definitely reacting differently depending on how I treat it, then. James concluded.
"Tower, are you an AI?" James asked, and for a moment, the tower was silent. It's never taken so long to respond before. James thought, as he began turning his attention back to the climber menu, which was still showing the view from the tall priest, Joseph Moore's, observer.
[I am designated as a manaevma servant, but the human term artificial intelligence is within acceptable parameters.]
"And what does... Manaevma, mean?" James asked, struggling to say the word correctly after only hearing it once.
[Details on Manaevma require an Admin Tier of 4 or higher to access.]
"Oh, okay." James said, pulling his focus away from the priest as he and others discussed the new quest that appeared, and accepted it. Nothing I can do about that then. Wait, when I think of the term AI, I think of machines with emotions and intelligence comparable to a human's, but I don't know if that's accurate. I suppose it doesn't matter. If it can change its behavior based on my actions, I should be nice to it. At least as long as it doesn't threaten to terminate my soul core again. Still, if there's any chance I can actually befriend the Tower, I should definitely do so. For one, having the Tower capable of doing so much to affect the survival of humanity on our side would be a huge bonus. For two, I'd really like to have a friend to talk to. I should try to learn more about it.
"Tower, which climber do you think would be best to watch?" James asked. If it picks someone, I'll ask why, and I can see what its reasoning is.
[Please state the parameters for your request.]
Or it'll do that. Still, getting its advice on things could be useful. "The climbers look like they're gonna split up into groups to go through the forested area around the village. I'd like to keep track of as many groups as possible. Could you compile a list of the groups the climbers form?"
[Affirmative. Displaying list of all parties, named after the climber with the most experience within said party. Additionally, I am capable of displaying the feed from multiple observers at once, and can display the feed from one observer from each party. Shall I do so, Administrator James Wise?]
"Yes, please. That would be great." James asked, as over a dozen screens appeared before him. Each one had a list of names of the people in the party, and names and screens changed as climbers switched to different groups. By the time everyone began leaving the forest, the screens settled on 13 different climbers. Eight groups of five, which turned out to be the maximum number of people allowed in a party, along with three groups of four, left the village behind as they spread out from the village gate into different directions. The remaining five of the 57 living climbers were in two separate parties, one of which was a group of four made of people from different parties who wanted to stay behind, and who formed their own party after, and another party featuring a lone rogue leaving the village on their own. James caught the rogue's info, Elizabeth Smith, the only level 2 climber. James wondered how she managed to get to level 2, but her lack of a party and the large amount of green blood on her leather and cloth armor hinted towards the answer. She must have killed most of the tutorial goblins on her own then. Did she leave her party behind or did they die during the fight? I should see what happened if I ever pick up the recorded viewing skill. James made a mental note, as he watched her walk slowly from the field to the trees, a note on her observer stating she had the sneak skill active.
"So, Tower, when do I need to set up the second floor? Also, is there any way I can mute the screens? There's too much sound coming out all at once." Watching multiple observers at once makes it impossible to follow along in any of their conversations. Immediately the sound from the screens was cut off.
[Administrator James Wise, you can mute a screen by focusing on it and thinking or saying "mute", and can undo this by doing the same with "unmute". I have taken the liberty of muting the screens for you this time, you are welcome. The second floor will need to be constructed at the end of the first day, and every subsequent floor will similarly need to be constructed once the first day on the previous floor has passed.]
Oh, so I don't have to worry about it until tomorrow. That's nice. I should have plenty of tower points by then too, since they refresh each day. James found himself switching his focus from screen to screen, occasionally unmuting one to hear if anything was being discussed, and muting it again once he wanted to look at a different screen. While James paid little attention to the screen featuring the climbers remaining within the village, he chose not to dismiss the screen, wanting to keep it open in case anything happened.
Eventually the screens went from displaying climbers walking through the field, some making jokes and others marching silently, to climbers entering the more wooded area that wasn't quite a forest. James watched in anticipation as he worried over potential attacks. He watched as some climbers gathered any fallen branches, and others broke off any branches they could reach.
"My inventory says I have 1.73 wood. It's combining all the branches I've gathered into one item." One warrior said as he broke off another branch. James hadn't counted how many branches the warrior had broken off already, but he had been watching it happen for a while between glances at other screens, and assumed it had to have been at least a dozen.
"Hey, there are berries here, think they're edible?" A rogue from another group asked, as he plucked a few from a bush. The mage the observer James was watching from belonged to simply shrugged.
"I have no idea." She said, and a priest joined in.
"Try it," the priest said, currently unarmed with her mace in her inventory. "I picked up a spell called antidote, it says it can cure poison, so I can cast that on you if they aren't." She explained, and the rogue took a moment to consider her words before tilting a handful of berries into his mouth.
"They aren't bad!" He said, "Taste kinda like grapes?" He picked several more, and handed them out to the priest and mage, the latter of which handed some off to the warrior who kept looking around as another man with a merchant class joined the rogue in grabbing berries.
Elsewhere, James watched a group of five chasing after a horned rabbit, which darted through a bush and into a clearing, where three other rabbits lurked in wait. They flew towards a fool James recognized as Oscar as he broke through the shrubbery separating his group from the rabbits, and he managed to hit one rabbit away with his walking stick before the other two impaled him in the stomach. "Ow. Not again." Oscar groaned, before two rogues broke through the brush, one stabbing down at the rabbit Oscar knocked aside as the other fired an arrow at one that jumped away after its successful attack.
"Fireball!" Kathleen the mage shouted as the set another rabbit ablaze, and the warrior James recognized as Doretha Luna, the warrior with the shield and goblin axe, blocked another rabbit's headbutt before chopping into it.
"Great work everyone." She said, as she stored one rabbit into her inventory. the two rogues doing the same, as Kathleen struggled to store hers with it still aflame. "Oscar, you doing alright?" She asked him, and he nodded as he activated a healing spell.
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"Yeah, when the rabbit ran off, I really thought I'd be able to kill it on my own. I didn't think it was getting backup." Oscar said as he got back to his feet. "Those horns hurt way too much for how small they are." He added.
"Well, your sacrifice meant we got to pick up three more rabbits than we expected, so good work!" Doretha said with a thumbs up as she stored the goblin's axe in her inventory. It was then that she turned to Kathleen, who was watching as the two rogues tried to put out the fire by stomping on it.
"It won't let me store it while it's on fire." Kathleen said, and Doretha nodded before using her shield to help the rogues, before finally letting Kathleen pick up the rabbit and store it.
On another screen, James watched as the level two rogue moved through a camp of three goblins, stabbing the one furthest away from the other two who were focused on cooking a rabbit they had killed. Unfortunately for her, the goblin did not die quietly, and she was forced to fight off a goblin holding a spear and another with a bow before eventually killing them both, taking two arrows in the side for her trouble. "Damn it, I need to do better if I'm going to survive on my own." She complained, as she pulled the arrows out of her side and downed a health potion. Whatever else she was thinking went unsaid, as she simply put the three dead goblins and the cooked rabbit into her inventory before slinking off back towards the village, reactivating her stealth skill.
It wasn't all successful. A party led by Joseph Moore was ambushed by eight goblins, and while they emerged victorious, the tall priest ran out of mana midway through the fight, and by the time he reached level two and could heal again, a woman with the warrior class had succumbed to her wounds. He used his recharged spell pool to heal everyone else to perfect condition before adding the dead warrior to his inventory and his party began heading back to the village.
Ultimately, many returned to the clearing the village was in before the three hours of their quest was up, but some of them remained outside the walls and kept watch over the gate as they rested, not feeling up to further exploration but still confident they could handle anything that entered the clearing. This would prove to be especially useful when a group of three came running into the clearing, chased by a group of goblins. The resting climbers banded together to take the goblins out, and the goblins quickly found themselves defeated without the advantage of numbers on their side.
By the time the sun was beginning to set, nine climbers had died. Two from one group, one from three separate groups, and one entire group of four had been killed, the latter from a group of over 20 goblins in a battle that had been painful for James to watch Other monsters weakened some of the groups, but beyond the group that lost two climbers from a pack of wolves, all of the deaths came from goblins. The other animals weren't powerful or numerous enough to kill anyone before being overpowered by the rest of the group, but the goblins would lay ambushes or use swarm tactics whenever possible. It was becoming clear the differences between wild animals and intelligent monsters, and while 48 climbers still remained, the atmosphere in the village was somber when the sun finished setting and the lost group of four never returned.
While many climbers returned feeling that things had gone worse than they had hoped, the situation in the village had improved from their excursion. One group had been lucky enough to find a river that curved away from the village on both sides, and while none of them had thought to take one of the ten buckets from the bathhouse beforehand, they managed to return to the village then go back to the river, eventually returning with three buckets of water. When asked why they hadn't filled all of the buckets, it was revealed that the buckets themselves couldn't be stored into an inventory, and rather than storing all of the buckets in their inventory, filling them up, and storing them back, two climbers in the group kept watch while the other three carried full buckets the entire way back. This earned a lot of gratitude from the other climbers, and well as praise. The buckets were each big enough to stand in, and the three were quickly separated, two into drinking water, and one for cleaning, with many using their clothes as a makeshift rag to dry their hands, before one rogue tore off the bottom part of their cloak for the village to use as a towel.
Doretha's group wasn't the only one that had encountered the horned rabbits, and over two dozen animals had been hunted down by the collective groups. While no one would be eating their fill, as many of the animals were small rabbits or birds, a deer as well as a few wolves ensured everyone would at least get to eat enough to not spend the night plagued with hunger. Joseph Moore's group had made enough to buy a firestarter in addition to a shovel from the general store, and some climbers began working on building a suitable bathroom. The climbers agreed to contribute wood to building five outhouses before they'd focus on fulfilling the quests for the bathhouse and canteen. A few climbers knew how to set up a spit and check if the meat was properly cooked, and instructed others. Five separate fires were made, roughly one for every two groups, and those who didn't help with cooking or making outhouses worked to keep track of what everyone was willing to sell and what was the best thing to buy next.
James had expected there to be fighting, or people hoarding resources, but was amazed at how well the climbers worked together. Some said they wanted to keep some things for themselves, but no one refused to contribute anything, or argued that others should be contributing more. Or at least, no fights broke out over it. A group of nearly half the total climbers went out and filled six of the remaining seven buckets created by the bathhouse quest, as well as refilling one of the buckets that had been nearly emptied from all the people drinking from it. They left one bucket alone, fearing that even without giving the bucket to the bathhouse quest, that it would automatically take them if all the buckets were filled and in the village. The climbers discovered that while the wood they removed from their inventory would look like it was freshly cut on the bottom and top, the size of the wood would change to the climber's desires, allowing them to quickly remove several as thin poles tall enough to form a wall without having to use tools to measure, cut, or get several smaller branches to work together.
As the meat that finished cooking was cut up and split among everyone, another discovery was made. Inside of each monster was a small gem where one would expect the heart to be. A climber added one into their inventory, and shared that it was called a monster core. As the climbers began discussing it, James switched to the observer of one reading the description of it within their inventory.
{Level 1 Monster Core: Unfiltered and corrupted mana, the source of monsters. A common Ingredient in Alchemist and Enchanter Recipes.}
As information on the monster cores spread, a discussion began on what to do with them. While some were interested in their potential use for the Alchemist’s Workshop, or hypothesized what enchanting entailed, it was soon discovered that cores on their own sold for their level’s worth in gold. The sole exception being level 0 cores often found in horned rabbits and large birds, which required ten to be sold at once for a single gold. A few climbers kept monster cores in their inventory to save for later, but many sold them to the general store. The common consensus was that they were too common to worry about hoarding, and more useful in the immediate future for buying things from the general store than whenever the village gained an alchemist’s workshop.
Two woodcutting axes, and several health potions were bought with the money collectively pooled by sold resources, and the latter was divided up based on how many each party had. By the time the sun had set, and everyone had eaten, people began finding spots on the ground to sleep, while others chose to keep watch.
I know I didn't truly do anything, but I'm proud seeing everyone work together like this. Are there just not any opportunists or power grabbers in this group? Maybe it doesn't matter even if there are. Everyone's starting from the same point, and everyone had to work with strangers to survive the initial battle. No one has enough individual power to make themselves the boss, and hoarding money and food isn't worth losing the support of everyone else. Anyone could see that without working together they'll die from the monsters outside the walls. I hope this kind of peace lasts.
[Administrator James Wise, the day has ended. Tallying rewards.]
{End of Day Results:
Climbers Survived: 48/100
Highest Viewer Count: 314,289
Longest Single View: 15 Minutes}
{You have earned 319 Tower Points through Viewer acquisition and retention!}
{You have provided enough entertainment to reach Tower Level 3! 300 Tower Points have been rewarded!}
{New Management Skills available!}
{New Tower Modifiers Available!}
Alright! A new skill and a new modifier, along with a total of 619 tower points to spend! I could create the carpenter store now, but maybe I should wait. They don't even have the bathhouse and canteen made. I should save whatever points I don't spend on the second floor on quest rewards. James thought. But first, let's see what skills and modifiers I can choose.
As if reading his thoughts, the tower spoke.
[Administrator James Wise, please choose the new modifier for this Tower.]